


Respite

by Wordlet



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Forests, Gen, Hateno Village, Homecoming, Horses, Kingdom of Hyrule, Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), PLATONIC not romantic, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), Sign Language, Sleep, Zora's Domain, self-care, stables
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 11:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29998935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordlet/pseuds/Wordlet
Summary: Respite1: a period of temporary delay2: an interval of rest or relieftraces from the Latin term respectus, which comes from a verb meaning, both literally and figuratively, "to turn around to look at" or "to regard." By the 14th century, we had granted "respite" the sense we use most often today-"a welcome break."
Relationships: Koroks & Link (Legend of Zelda), Link & Prince Sidon
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	Respite

**Author's Note:**

> The summary is a quote from Merriam Webster dictionary website!  
> Credit to ["You Could never swing that dagger"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13834161/chapters/31817220) by [bodysharing(salvainterra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvainterra/pseuds/bodysharing) and [westerngenre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/westerngenre/pseuds/westerngenre) for my headcanon that link names things after food. Also credit to, like, the entire rest of the fandom for my mute link headcanons.
> 
> This is one of those pieces that I actually wrote really quickly and it only needed minimal editing and I'm really happy with it. I hope you all enjoy it too!
> 
> Let Link Rest 2021, catch me finally playing a challenge run where I eat three meals a day and rest at a campfire or stable every night.

* * *

**Respite**

* * *

It’s night. Or, perhaps not anymore. The sky is fading from midnight to dawn off to the East and his limbs are heavy with exhaustion. The sluggish flow of blood from the wound on his leg has slowed to a tacky scab and the pinto he’d stolen from a moblin hunting party is slick with sweat beneath him.

It’s been a full day’s travel by now, surely. But it’s still dark enough that the light of a stable just around the bend radiates into the night, cheery and welcoming. He digs his heels into the pinto’s sides with the last bit of his desperation and lets relief curl his shoulders forward. Time to rest.

The stable worker at the desk takes one look and calls for the night hand to take the horse.

“You seem to have had a long journey. Regular beds are-”

Link drops a handful of rupees on the counter to cut her off. It’s a soft bed night. His head is ringing and his body pulses with aches. It’s too much to balance the weight of his head on his shoulders.

The stable is quiet, or sounds are at least dampened in the night, but not still. They never are still, Link has learned. There’s a child curled in one of the soft beds, it’s too big for her and the signature hat of a stable worker rests beside her head on the pillow. Link steps into the shelter and slips past Beedle who is leaned against the wall with his counter top folded over his chest. Outside, the fire crackles as a worker pokes at it and adds some more wood. A goat bleats and there are soft voices beside the jingle of riding gear. Link sits down on the bed and relishes the sensation as he sinks into the mattress. It’s so familiar now, even though he couldn’t say if he’s ever been here before. The stables are all different, but they mean the same thing to him. Refuge. Peace. Belonging.

It’s a big world out there, split into so many pieces by a calamity a hundred years ago. He spends so much time scattered across all of it, and is so broken himself, it makes sense that his home is broken too. Home is always a little too hot or a little too cold. It smells like hay and campfire smoke. It’s never really quiet.

Link lays back and slides the sheikah slate underneath his pillow. He’s too tired to pull the blankets out from under him, but he doesn’t want to get the sheets bloody anyway so that works. He turns away from the open wall so the sunrise doesn’t wake him and closes his eyes.

It takes a minute, as it always does. His heart still thumps rapidly, and his aches pulse with the rhythm of his pinto’s gallop. Instinct tells him to turn over, face the door, keep one eye open and watch for danger.

But Link is stubborn, and he waits for his body to remember the drill. How to still and slow. Sleep settles over him as morning light reaches grasping rays over the horizon.

By the time they reach him he is too far gone to be disturbed.

* * *

Morning in the Zora Domain is one of Link’s favorite times. The buildings are built of silver and crystal and the air smells of salt and fresh, clean fish. The sunlight fills everything up like amber tea in a crystal goblet.

Night time in the Zora Domain is one of Link’s least favorite times.

The night there is deep and dark and the luminous stone deposits and diamond cut spires glow out in mesmerizing patterns.

It’d be beautiful, if it weren’t so familiar.

Sidon has Link waiting in a guest room while the Zora Prince finishes a meeting. When he returns they’ll go out into the surrounding mountains and hunt stalkoblins, but for now Link is alone for a while longer. The sky outside is cloudy and black. It’ll rain tomorrow. But for now it’s just a dark expanse. He tilts his chin up and the wind off the Great Basin brushes against his cheeks and through his hair. It’s cool, like a first breath.

He closes his eyes and focuses.

  1. There’s a loose string in the collar of his shirt; it’s been bothering him.
  2. He didn’t go swimming today and he relishes the sensation of being completely and totally dry.
  3. Like always, sleep is tugging insistently at his eyelids.



He tries to focus on the things that are different.

It had been cold, then. The air was stagnant and stale and smelled faintly of iron. Overhead, the ceiling was not the textured black of night but a glistening brown that inhaled illumination. Water had dripped down his back and left a trail as he walked across the smooth floor. The shirt and leggings he’d found in the entryway had been too tight and full of holes.

But he can’t shake the familiarity. When he woke up in the shrine of resurrection, he’d been exhausted. The heavy kind of tired that haunts you for the next few hours (but that one had trailed behind him for days). Looking up at the ceiling he’d been blind to for a hundred years was far too similar to where he is now- standing at the balcony and watching the glow of the Domain strike out against the night. It makes him feel lonely.

“Link!” Sidon’s voice cuts right through his thoughts. “I finished the meeting, are you ready to go?”

“ _Yeah,”_ He signs, a quick gesture that he casts over his shoulder as he turns away from the view he’d been considering. He’s relieved to have it at his back.

Unfortunately, Sidon knows him better than Link would like to admit. There must be something in his expression or the quickness of his response because Sidon’s face falls and all his frills droop as though he’s trying to appear less threatening.

“Are you alright, Link?” The prince takes a step closer, away from the door, and Link starts forward with determination.

“ _I'm fine, let’s go. Stalkoblins will only be out for a few more hours.”_

“The Stalkoblins will be there tomorrow night.” Sidon frowns, “Perhaps you should rest for now.”

It’s times like this that Link wishes he could scream. Not actually, because he could if he really wanted to. But as he raises his hand in the most exuberant and meaningful sign for the word ‘no’ that he knows, Sidon talks right over him.

“The roads are so tiring, and you know that you’re welcome for as many nights as you like.” Sidon frowns again, deeper this time. “You only ever stay for one.”

Link drops his hand. He can hear the tinge of hurt in his friend’s voice and the guilt wells up with the force of a moblin club catching him in the side.

“ _I wish I could. It’s just..."_ He pauses for long enough for long enough that Sidon picks up the thread.

“Don’t say you have to get back to your quest. Hyrule has waited a hundred years. I know the importance of your work, you can’t dally, but you’ve already come this far. Those treats that you brought, they were from the desert, were they not? If you can travel from the other side of the realm to farm elixir ingredients with me, then you can stay two nights, and actually get some sleep for once.”

Link scowls. He doesn’t often feel that signs limit his ability to communicate, but the logic of his predicament doesn’t translate into gestures. He isn’t even sure it translates into words.

“ _I don’t like...”_ He curves his hands around the shape of his words, attempting to sculpt what he means. “ _Sleep.”_

“I know.” Sidon says.

“ _No! I mean, I don’t feel like I_ can _sleep. Here. At night.”_ Link drops his hands to his side and fiddles with the slate hanging from his hip. With one hand he signs, “ _I don’t hate sleeping. It’s just, hard, sometimes.”_

Sidon’s face softens. He turns around and shuts the door with a quiet click. Link props his hands on his hips but Sidon gestures soothingly and herds him back towards the balcony.

“Then don’t sleep. But at the very least I want you to have a chance to rest.” They lean against the railing and look out on the view. It’s still too much for Link. The blue luminous stones, and the orange of lit braziers circle through the dark in unknowable patterns. Every time the wind pauses, Link forgets to breathe.

“Tell me of your travels. The quiet parts.” Sidon smiles and his teeth glint sharp in the ambient light. “You’ve already told me the exciting bits.”

Link stares down at the Great Basin, focuses on the faint reflection of the palace in the water. Shrine stone does not reflect anything, no matter how bright. In shrines, he’s always alone.

“ _I watched the sunrise once.”_

* * *

All his shattered pieces fuse back together into one on the front step of Myahm Agana Shrine. The night air here is far warmer than the slopes of Hebra peak and water drips off the shield slung across his back as the snow melts. He reaches up and starts unbraiding the ruby bands from his hair as he steps off the platform and into the unkempt grass. The lights of Hateno glitter in front of him, warm and inviting. The box houses in this part of town are stacked all on top of one another and he smiles up at the lit windows as he drops down from the small outcropping the shrine is built on and heads home.

In the distance a bokoblin sounds a horn, something in the woods startles and takes off at a gallop. Link pauses on the bridge to look out at the pocket of Hyrule that protects Hateno Village from everything he faces on a daily basis. It’s beautiful now, when it’s a bit farther away.

The house looks lonely, set apart from the rest. It’s an older style, built closer to when the stores in town center were. The walls are tall and bare, not much has been done for the landscaping, the stable built into the side is empty and unstocked.

Link pushes the door open and steps inside.

He drops his shield first and it clatters and rolls against the floorboards. Next, he peels off his downy coat, damp with snowmelt, and it lands on the ground with a heavy thump. The windows, still open from the last time he was here, creak as a night wind bustles through. He stills in front of the mirror and reaches up to finish undoing the snowquill headdress. The snowbird feathers slide free easily and the rubies bump gently against his cheek before settling with a resonant clatter on the table when he sets them aside.

He stands in the middle of his house and loosely wraps his arms around himself, watching his reflection in the mirror. There are crickets outside chirping up a chorus and the door he left open lets in warm breezes that stir up dust. He yawns.

And just like that, his heart slows and settles. Home again.

The usual habits return to him from somewhere distant. Not before his memory gap, but before the landmarks of his life now. Before he visited the desert for the first time. Before he met Yunobo. Before he saw his first blood moon. Reaching into the slate for soup ingredients feels like a movement he hasn’t used in eons but truly it was last week when he visited home before challenging the Divine Beast that soared above the Rito village. He gathers the ingredients in his arms and carries them outside.

Someone from the village keeps his fire lit and burning at night. He thinks it’s supposed to keep monsters from moving in. The place is just far enough and always quiet so that no one would notice if they did. Link settles back on his heels and works the ingredients from separate pieces into a whole. When they’re ready to simmer he unhooks the traveler’s sword from his belt and uses it as a fire poker to knock a few of the logs out of the flame. The charcoal and ash in the grass put out their own plume of smoke but the heat abates. Behind the house, the apple tree is in full fruit and he climbs up on the fence to pick them fresh.

After days of surviving on meat skewers and simmered fruit, it's strange to eat dinner like this. He sits at the table and eats a meal with all four food groups. It’s only eleven pm when he finishes and trudges up the steps. The wet downy coat gets laid out to dry on the second landing railing and he hangs the thicker leggings he wears in cold temperatures next to them. On the bed are the thin shirt and pants he’d bought when he stumbled through the gates into Kakariko. They’re a little too short, but not too tight, and changing into them feels like returning to a simpler time. He climbs into bed and pulls the covers over him. Outside the moon is white and smiling.

He tucks his arms behind his head and closes his eyes. Sleep comes easier here and he welcomes it home.

* * *

Link is familiar with the children of the forest.

He growls as he takes another step and the fog clears just enough for him to see his immediate surroundings. The sign etched with a warning glowers at him. A chorus of laughter rises out of the mists.

In his right hand, the fire of the torch climbs low enough to burn his fingers and he watches it for a moment, the flames licking low around his hand, before realizing that he should drop it. He crushes the embers under his boot and doesn’t bother digging a spare out of the slate. The light had done nothing to help with visibility anyhow.

The wind blows through his hair and more laughter flies around his head. It’s giving him a headache.

Beans knickers and trots over to greet Link, as he has everytime Link has been whisked back to this starting point. He can’t help but pat the horse’s nose and lean against him for a moment. His feet ache from walking the same paths again and again, slowly narrowing down where the trail really exists. He’d ride but Beans had panicked everytime the fog closed in around them and spat them back out again. Just because Link has to suffer doesn’t mean Beans must.

He starts forward again. The mist is so thick he feels he could reach out and set his hand against it. For once he doesn’t even need to hold a weapon in his hand. He’s certain the woods are barren of monsters, but he reaches back and equips a melee weapon anyhow. His fingers twitch for the hilt at every rustle of wings but, well, he’s been a little twitchy, these days.

A hollow tree with a garish face carved into it looms out of the fog and Link banks a sharp left. The laughter rings hollow in his ears, like something coming to him underwater. There’s a flicker of orange ahead, a flame or a fox? He can’t tell. He aims himself in that direction and _goes_. His heartbeat thumps beneath every inch of his skin, pulse heavy in his cheeks, his neck, his shoulders- he can feel everything. The fog is so close and he feels a little claustrophobic.

Cliffs rise up and he holds his breath; this is different. This is new. One step, three, six, the air lightens and… He’s out.

Link stops and breathes in sunlight.

The fog burns away in the space between one step and the next. The laughter turns to chattering and birdsong. Link shifts his shoulders at the sudden release of pressure and retreat of the chill that had settled into his bones.

“Mr. Hero!” a voice calls, and then another, and then another. He turns in a slow circle and watches as koroks pop into and out of existence in their strange ways. He sneezes at the clouds of pollen that burst into the air.

“You’re finally here!” One of the spirits says, toddling up to him with all the threat of an inquisitive puppy. “We’ve been expecting you!”

His fingers inch toward his weapon, currently a mop he stole from a stable in the heat of a battle with the Yiga clan. Koroks have never been violent before but there’re too many of them to handle without the element of surprise. Link shuffles backward a step and tendrils of fog creep in around his ankles.

“Wait, you’ll get lost!” the korok snatches his hand and pulls him back into the sunlight. Link frees his hand with a sharp twist and signs rapidly.

“ _If you were expecting me, why wouldn’t the fog let me through?_ ”

“That would have been too easy for the hero!” One of the spirits calls and a small chorus agrees.

“The fog is never closed,” the front one with its crooked twig wand says. “You just have to follow the path!” They’re herding him forward and he walks with the tide for lack of a better option.

“If only the hero can get through then the forest is safe!” one of the koroks says, this one has an oak leaf from the orange days of autumn. “Safe for the forest children, and safe for the hero!”

Link almost stumbles at that. Nowhere is safe, he’s learned that lesson several times. The forests just West of Hateno Village are still home to monsters, the travelers he passes on the roads are sometimes Yiga fighters who offer him thanks with one hand and keep a scythe tucked in their other. Everyone needs something, there’s always a task just outside of safe borders, or a threat yearning to break into them.

“Mr. Hero!” a familiar voice calls and Link looks up to find Hestu running up to him, his maracas shaking merrily at his side. “You made it to the forest! You came to visit me!”

Oh, that’s right. He vaguely remembers running into the oversized forest spirit near Dueling Peaks. He’d completely forgotten that Hestu had instructed him to visit a forest to the North.

“We’ve got stuff to show you!” Another forest child pipes up. They drift above his head with a propeller made of maple seeds. “Come see, come see!”

Link follows the path with hesitance. He’s never paid attention to how different they all were before. Some want to be seen, some morph into flowers, others hide haphazardly but are too curious to stay out of the way. There are leaves he doesn’t recognize and all different expressions. Some walk or run but others hop and teleport. Some fly. There’s a whole menagerie and all Link can do is follow the flood. Until it comes up against a stone pedestal and where they all flow around, he steps up onto it.

There’s a sword hilt waiting for him.

The koroks chatter on, something about a store and the great deku tree and fogs and trees that will swallow him and spit him back out. He can only stare at the sword and drift a few steps closer with each breath. He reaches his hand out and can feel a sort of electricity, a magnetic pull, a lone string of gravity as his fingers drift just shy of touching it.

“Be careful, young hero.” A voice says and the forest doesn’t shake with it so much as shiver and echo, passing it around from bough to bough. “The sword that seals the darkness may be yours to claim, but it is no complacent companion. You’ll have to prove yourself before you can pull it free.”

Link looks up and faces the Great Deku Tree. It’s huge, grandfatherly, and completely unfamiliar- like everything else in the world. But there’s a kindness in his eyes and in his voice that Link recognizes from his dreams (the princess that speaks to him there) and from the ghosts of Champions who know him better than he knows himself. This is an old friend, or something like it.

“You’re as quiet as I remember.” The tree laughs.

“ _Tell me about the sword_ .” He signs, “ _That’s what I’m here for. I need it to defeat the calamity._ ”

“Patience. You have taken this long, and I can sense you are not ready yet.” A soft breeze brushes through the trees and the laughter rises up again. It’s the Deku tree chuckling in a hundred voices. “One you defeat the last blight of the divine beasts you may return to see if you are prepared.”

Link ducks his head low. He doesn’t want to go to the last divine beast. He doesn’t feel prepared. Back on Rudania, without Mipha- he’s not prepared.

But… that only means that he’s probably not ready to claim the sword yet either.

“Fear not, the children of the forest have been preparing for your arrival.” The tree says, and there’s the edge of laughter in his voice again. “It’s rather impressive. For them. But I won’t spoil their surprise.”

Link raises a hand to ask a question or protest or say goodbye, he can’t say really, but the Deku tree’s eyes are already closing. “Rest, Hero. We are practiced in it, here.”

He lets the forest move on without him then. The Deku tree goes still but for the wind in his branches and the forest glitters in sunlight. All around the pedestal are silent princesses in perfect, pristine bloom. Link closes his eyes and wishes the flower was still going extinct. Wishes he could hear her voice in his head. Silent princesses are much less valuable than silent heroes.

“Mr. Hero?” He opens his eyes to find a particularly diminutive korok. They’ve got a sprig of cool saffina in one… hand? And are reaching for his fingers with the other. “We’re sorry about the fog but we really are happy you’re here! Please come see…”

“ _See what_?” He signs, too tired to resist getting tugged a few steps forward at a time.

“Everything we’ve prepared!” The spirit says. “We’ve got mushrooms and supplies for you! And a fire! (Please don’t make it any bigger Deku tree says we should be careful with fire.) And we have trials-”

" _I've done enough trials.”_ He keeps the signs short and sharp. “ _I’m not interested in playing games with all of you._ ”

“Oh,” The edges of the korok’s leaf face shrivel slightly but it keeps pulling Link along. “That’s fine! We understand! We just thought, you’re always working so hard. You should get to have fun! But you don’t have to play.” They come to the roots of the Deku tree and Link looks up at the work of centuries building the forest’s master. The korok doesn’t go up though, it leads in and finds a fissure in the trunk, which opens up into a small cavity. A cooking pot rests over a fire and in quiet alcoves decorated with fireflies and flowers small spirits wave to him and call for his attention. A mushroom shop, a small collection of arrows and foreign foods, a bed made of forest litter and dandelion fluff.

“ _What is all this?_ ” He asks and the koroks gathered around his feet quiet enough for the small one to say-

“It’s for you! Hero things! Anything you need!”

Link wanders forward toward the bed, there’s a spirit resting against it, snoozing in the soft atmosphere of the room. It starts awake at his footsteps, even when they are near silent on the moss carpet.

“Mr. Hero! It’s you!” It says, and the incredulousness in its voice make it easy for Link to pick out the remnants of an expression in its mask. “Look, I made this for you!”

“ _Thank you_ .” He signs on instinct and then, also on instinct. “ _How much?_ ”

“How much what?” The korok tilts its head to the side in polite confusion. This is, in fact, the politest korok Link has ever met. “I don’t need anything. I made this a hundred years ago! When the princess said you’d be coming here. Please! All I want is for the Great Hero to get some rest… I’ve waited so long… I know it’s very comfortable. Just try it…” And with that the spirit drooped back into sleep.

Link laid a hand on the top sheet, it’s made of soft long leaves sewn together with what could be spider silk. The little spirit resting beside it makes it seem even more alluring, somehow. He turns back to the greater part of the cavity. It feels cozy and homey, but where his house in Hateno is homey but empty and the stables are cozy but always a place of business and work… this place is built for him. From the gathered mushrooms to the handmade arrows acquired from who knows where. There’s no other reason for this place to be here. It’s for him.

The last of his twitchines eases away and he sits down on the edge of the bed, sliding his bow off his back and resting his mop against the wall. He’s not ready for sleep, just now. But he could bask in the peace of this place for hours.

And for now that’s what he’ll do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and please leave a comment to let me know your thoughts~ Also I take botw fic reccs, I have a hunger.


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